All systems are go for an attempted missile intercept over the Pacific that will help decide whether the United States goes forward with deployment of the controversial national missile defense (NMD), US officials said Thursday.
Hit or miss, the test late Friday will not answer all questions about the system’s effectiveness or quell a raging debate over whether the spread of ballistic missiles warrants tinkering with a nuclear balance of power that has kept the peace for 50 years.
But the outcome will determine whether the Pentagon certifies NMD as ready for deployment by 2005, a crucial factor in President Bill Clinton’s decision this fall whether to start construction of the first phase of the system.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral Craig Quigley called it “the last planned shot” before US Defense Secretary William Cohen makes a formal recommendation to the president on the system’s technological feasibility.
Final preparations were underway Thursday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands for the test, officials said.
“All systems are go right now,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. “Everything looks good for a test to take place Friday.”
Weather is forecasted to be good although there could be delays if the range at Vandenberg is obscured by fog, officials said.
“But we don’t see any big storms, and mechanically the systems are ready to go,” Quigley said.
Armed with a dummy warhead and a balloon decoy, a modified Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile is to be fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base over the Pacific after a four-hour launch window opens at 10:00 p.m. Friday in Washington (0200 GMT Saturday).
Poised at Kwajalein to intercept it is another missile, which will carry into space a 60 kilogram (130-pound) “exoatmospheric kill vehicle” that is designed to destroy the incoming warhead by ramming it at closing speeds of some 24,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) per hour.
Synchronizing the hoped-for collision are an array of early warning satellites, a ground radar in Hawaii and a prototype of a powerful targeting radar in Kwajalein called an X-Band radar, which will track the warhead and balloon and help guide the kill vehicle to its target.
Linking them all together are computerized command centers in Colorado and Kwajalein, which will process data from the various sensors, project the targets trajectory and fire the interceptor missile.
From launch to intercept (or miss), the 100 million dollar test is expected to take only about 30 minutes but span the nearly 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) between California and the Marshall Islands, which lie in the middle of the Pacific.
Opponents to the system have mobilized for the tests, holding news conferences and circulating a letter signed by Nobel prize-winning scientists calling the missile shield “premature, wasteful and dangerous.”
The environmentalist group Greenpeace announced it was sending its vessel MV Arctic Sunrise into waters off California that the air force has declared a hazard zone during the test.
Pentagon officials have played down chances of success.
The last intercept attempt in January failed when the infrared sensors that kill vehicle uses to find the warhead failed in the final seconds. The first intercept attempt in October succeeded, although under less demanding conditions.
But senior Pentagon officials now say that even in the event of a miss, the Defense Department may still recommend deployment of the system depending on the seriousness of the failure.
They say construction must begin by spring on the site of the system’s X-band radar in Shemya Island, Alaska if the system is to be deployed by 2005, when US intelligence believes North Korea will have a missile capable of hitting the United States.
The system is designed to protect the United States against a limited missile attack by potential adversaries like North Korea, Iran or Iraq — not an all-out attack by Russia. China’s smaller ICBM arsenal is likely to be affected, however, according to experts.
Clinton has said he will weigh the threat, the cost, the technological feasibility of the system, and the impact of deployment on international arms control.
Russia, China and others have warned that deployment, which would mean withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, would trigger a destabilizing arms race.
